The invention is directed generally to the field of document handling apparatus such as bill counting, bill sorting, bill discriminating or authenticating apparatus and the like, and more particularly to a novel document facing method and apparatus for reversing the face orientation of a document such that all of the documents handled by the document or bill handling apparatus will be in the sane, "face-up" or "face-down" orientation.
Many document handling systems such as bill counters, bill discriminator and bill authentication apparatus identify and/or sort currency bills by scanning and identifying characteristics on one or both surfaces or faces of the bills. Some systems automatically reject bills which are fed through the system in oppositely facing orientation. In this regard, documents such as currency bills are generally defined as is having two face orientations, namely a "face-up" or obverse facing orientation or a "face-down" or reverse facing orientation. Thus, each bill or document has an obverse face, for example the face bearing a portrait of a U.S. president in U.S. currency, and a reverse face, for example the surface bearing other pictorial information, such as the word "one" in large letters in U.S. $1 currency, and pictures of various U.S. government buildings in other denominations of U.S. currency.
Often, in bill handling systems which sort the bills by denomination, it is desirable that the sorted bills be in the same face orientation, that is either all "face-up" or all "face-down."
A number of prior art systems and devices have devised various mechanisms for reversing the face orientation of documents such as bills in various bill handling systems. However, as more fully discussed below, most of the systems are either relatively complex and cumbersome, and often relatively slow in operation. In contrast, it is an object of the invention to provide a bill facing apparatus which is relatively simple and reliable in operation and capable of operation at relatively high speed such that it may be used with or incorporated into a relatively high speed bill handling apparatus.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,930,581 relates to a sheet feeding mechanism. The patent describes (e.g., FIG. 5) oppositely rotated drums for reversing the face orientation of bills. However, the documents must be transferred between oppositely rotating drums which are of different diameters. This could cause tearing or jamming of the documents.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,398,088 relates to an automatic bank- note transaction apparatus. As described with reference to FIG. 4 of this patent, a note is turned over by running it through a generally U-shaped path which in effect reverses the orientation of the note, and then returning the note in this turned-over orientation to the beginning of the path. Thus, each turned-over note must be run through at least part of the apparatus twice.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,465,192 relates to an apparatus for processing "paper sheets." The operation is such that reversibly oriented bills are fed to a separate paddle wheel or vane wheel which reverses the orientation of the bills as it deposits them into an associated stacking chamber 34 (FIG. 3). From this separate stacking chamber 34, the bills may at some appropriate time be fed out from the bottom part of the chamber with their now "face-up" orientation and returned to the inlet area of the device to be re-evaluated. Thus, these bills must run through at least part of the apparatus twice.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,542,829 relates to apparatus for sorting "sheets" according to their patterns. The patent discloses only a functional block (see FIG. 1) designated as a "turn-over mechanism 12." No details of this mechanism are disclosed. The patent appears to be directed primarily to the algorithm by which a digital correlator means operates in connection with determining which side of the bill has the better correlation (column 5, lines 45-53).
U.S. Pat. No. 4,587,408 describes an automatic depositing/dispensing apparatus which includes a bill reversal mechanism. The operation with respect to this reversal mechanism is described with reference to FIGS. 6-9. A "judgment section" 30 judges notes to be reversed, and they are directed to a conveyor path 32c where they are fed to a paddle wheel 31 which reverses the bills and deposits them in a temporary holding tray 41. This tray 41 may later be moved into a position where pinch rollers (not shown) transfer the notes in their now corrected orientation back to the inlet to be run again through the judgment section 30. This involves the rather time-consuming feature of first separating out reverse oriented bills, flipping them over and then reintroducing them back to the beginning of the conveyor path of the machine.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,690,268 relates to a sheet convey apparatus including a twisted convey path which turns the sheets 180.degree.. The structure of this twisted convey path is illustrated in FIGS. 3-7 of the drawings, and includes a belt which is twisted 720.degree. and looped in a figure-8 configuration.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,697,071 concerns a "circulation-type" automatic money receiving and paying machine with note side identifying and note turning-over sections. Here, the note turning-over section (see FIG. 1) is located downstream of the identifying section. The turning over mechanism is shown in FIG. 3, and its operation is described with reference to FIGS. 4a-f and 5a-e. This is an involved mechanism incorporating a number of belts, rollers, vanes and a pivoting "direction changing board."
U.S. Pat. No. 4,856,768 relates to a separating device for a "sheet collecting apparatus." The device presents separate paths for obverse and reverse oriented bills; however, it would appear that the bills are not flipped a such, but merely that only bills with the same orientation are stacked into the container at a given time. That is, if obverse oriented bills are being stacked in the container, the reverse oriented bills are held until the container is emptied, and then only reverse oriented bills are stacked in the container. Although the description states, at column 4, lines 37-38 "the sides of the bank notes are aligned in the same manner when the bank notes are collected in the collecting chamber 168," it does not appear that a flipping of the bills to achieve this would in fact take place with the mechanism as illustrated and described.